'Gendering Big Brother': What Should a Feminist Do?

Abstract

Set in the context of an imaginary dialogue between a straight, white, middle-aged radical feminist law professor and her Cyber-feminism student, this paper explores various theories about stereotypes and other tools of discrimination, as well as the emancipatory potential of digitized communications for equality-seeking groups. It suggests that the Snowden revelations about widespread government surveillance of citizens and concerns around “big data” present an opportunity for coalition between feminists and civil libertarians on the issue of surveillance. In the final analysis though, the paper cautions that this context may simply reflect a moment of interest convergence in which collaboration is unlikely to produce real change for subordinated groups unless the discriminatory tropes that disproportionately expose members of subordinated groups to surveillance are first addressed.

Keywords: Surveillance, big data, feminism, equality, human rights, civil liberties, law

JEL Classification: J71, K19, O33